


Together

by loves_books



Category: The A-Team (2010), The A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, References to Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 22:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10545188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loves_books/pseuds/loves_books
Summary: “You thinkin’ about them?”BA grunted, tightening his arm around Murdock's slender shoulders before admitting, “I’m always thinking about them. When I’m not thinking about you, anyway.”





	

“Thought I’d find you out here.” In spite of the almost unnatural quiet of the night around him, BA wasn’t startled when he heard the softly-spoken words in a familiar Texan drawl, and he smiled as he listened to shuffling footsteps cross the wooden porch towards the swing where he sat. “Bed was gettin’ awful cold without you.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” It was the peak of a steamy hot Georgia summer, and even at god-awful o’clock in the morning it was still warm enough that BA was sat outside comfortably wearing only his boxers. But he still lifted one arm for Murdock to crawl under as the smaller man joined him on the swing, similarly dressed in just a pair of shorts, both of them staring out across the darkened fields and at the sea of stars shining above them.

The easy silence crept back in as they sat together for what could have been hours but was more likely only a few minutes, before Murdock asked quietly, “You thinkin’ about them?” 

BA grunted, tightening his arm around slender shoulders before admitting, “I’m always thinking about them. When I’m not thinking about you, anyway.” 

There came a soft sigh as Murdock settled closer, one hot hand starting to stroke gentle circles on BA’s chest. “I wonder where they are right now. I wonder if he’s still… I mean, if Hannibal is…”

“I know what you mean, baby.” It was hard for BA to put the truly dark thoughts into words himself, even now. It didn’t seem real. But it was real, painfully so. 

Murdock seemed to feel the need to try to explain himself, though, and after a moment he started speaking again. “I keep thinkin’ that I’ll know, when he does… when it happens. That I’ll feel it somehow, like a sudden realisation maybe, of the fact he’s actually gone from the world. Does that sound crazy to you?”

“Doesn’t sound crazy at all.” BA dropped a lingering kiss to his partner’s forehead, squeezing his eyes shut for a brief moment. “All that life, all that passion in the man. He’s always been such a huge presence. Makes sense to me that you’d feel it.”

“And you’d feel it too, I think. But it doesn’t feel that way right now, does it?” The words were whispered into BA’s bare chest, barely more than a puff of warm breath against his heated skin. “To me, it doesn’t feel like he’s gone. It feels like they’re both still out there, somewhere. Together and alive. For tonight, at least. Who knows about tomorrow?”

BA couldn’t speak over the sudden lump in his throat, contenting himself with wrapping both arms around Murdock tightly and pulling him closer still, until the smaller man was practically sitting in his lap. Thank goodness they had each other. Thank goodness he’d finally seen what he could truly have with someone who had been standing right in front of him for all the long years they’d been a team, waiting and hoping that BA would put the pieces together and love him back.

“I keep thinkin’ we should’ve seen it.”

Distracted by his love for the man in his arms, it took BA a long moment to catch up with Murdock’s train of thought, something which was still a challenge for him even at the very best of times. Face and Hannibal had always made it seem so easy.

“You mean, we should’ve seen what they were planning?” he asked after a moment. “That last night when we were all together?”

Murdock nodded once, burrowing his head further into BA’s broad chest and sliding a skinny yet strong arm around his waist. “We should’ve known what they’d do,” he whispered into the night, and BA suddenly found himself shivering in the heat, like a ghost had walked over his grave.

After going back over the memories time and time again in the three long months since the other half of their tightly-knit team had disappeared, BA often found himself thinking the very same thing. They should have known, but it had been a good night, that last night, in spite of the ever-looming shadow of Hannibal’s illness. Grilling steaks and drinking beers, just like the four of them had always done, only they’d been in Hannibal and Face’s own backyard rather than out in a FOB somewhere. 

It had barely been a year since the team had finally received their longed-for pardons, and they’d all been gradually finding their feet in civilian life, getting used to the strange feeling of not having to constantly be looking back over their shoulders, before their colonel’s diagnosis had thrown them all into a sudden and unexpected tailspin.

But Hannibal had been having a good day, or at the least he’d managed to put on a strong show of it, laughing and joking even as he sat and watched Murdock and Face work the grill, rather than being up on his feet alongside them. BA had sat with him, stealing sideways glances at the older man, noticing the weight-loss and the slight tremor in hands that had always been steady, and the grey tint tiptoeing over tanned skin.

It had been a good day, though, which had turned into a good night, and it had been all too easy to forget the disease that was creeping through Hannibal’s body, stealing him away one piece at a time. Easy to forget that the doctors had told him there was nothing more they could do, news that Hannibal had passed on to them a week earlier with a simple shrug and a tiny smile. Easy to overlook how little Hannibal had actually managed to eat, despite Face’s gentle coaxing and constant hovering. Easy to ignore how exhausted he had looked, and the pills he had swallowed dry when he’d thought no one was watching.

Hindsight was an absolute bitch. Now, three months later, BA couldn’t remember if Hannibal’s eyes had actually been bright with unshed tears when they’d hugged goodbye, or if it was just his memory playing tricks on him. He wasn’t sure if those weakened arms had lingered around his shoulders for longer than usual, clinging on for every last second, a sign perhaps of what Face and Hannibal had been planning.

But whether or not there had been signs, and whether or not BA and Murdock had missed them, it didn’t change the fact that they’d arrived back at the house the following afternoon to find their teammates gone. No notes, no clues as to where they’d headed, but BA had understood immediately; Face had taken Hannibal away. That last night with the four of them together had been Hannibal’s farewell.

“I hate the fact that they didn’t tell us,” BA found himself saying, his own words seeming too loud as they echoed strangely, disturbing the stillness of the night. “I hate it with all my heart. But I get it.”

“I don’t.” Murdock’s words were suddenly angry, heated like the air around them, and he sat up slightly to look BA in the eyes as well as he could in only the faint light from the stars. “I don’t get it at all. We should be there with them. We should all be with Hannibal when he… Face had no right to take him away like that. We’re a team. No, we’re a family. How could he do that?”

“You think he could’ve taken Hannibal away if Hannibal hadn’t wanted to go?” That was something BA had struggled with at first – Face’s actions he could understand, somehow, but Hannibal’s? Then, the more he’d looked back over everything he knew about those two men, and how they thought and felt about the world, the more it had all made a strange sort of sense. “Hannibal wouldn’t want us to see him get real sick. He’d want us to remember him as the man he was. And he wouldn’t have actually ever wanted to say ‘goodbye’, not out loud.”

“But that doesn’t matter,” Murdock argued, as he had done each and every time they’d spoken about it all. “We should be there. Face should’ve fought for us to be there.”

“And what if it was me?” The words slipped out almost without BA’s permission, and Murdock gasped, diving back down to bury his head into BA’s chest and nearly head-butting him on the chin in the process.

“Don’t say that,” Murdock hissed, sounding a little choked as his arms tightened almost painfully around BA’s chest.

But BA steeled himself and pushed on, wrapping his arms tightly around his partner in return even as he felt tears prickling at the backs of his eyes. “If it was me who was sick, would you want Hannibal and Face there too, or would you want me all to yourself for every moment we had left?”

“Please, please don’t say that.”

“Baby, that’s what we have to think about. They’re together and that’s the way they want it. It’s the way I think I’d want it, if it was you, heaven forbid.” 

The deep and abiding love between Colonel and Lieutenant had been blindingly obvious to BA from the very first moment he’d seen the pair together in his van, all those long years ago back in Mexico when a crazy man had shot him in the arm and begged for his help. He’d seen how the two men came as a pair, how tightly they were entwined together, and regardless of when their physical love affair actually started – Face had always sworn it hadn’t been until after the car-crash that had been his relationship with Sosa, but BA still had his doubts – they had only ever needed each other. 

Wherever the two men were now, BA hoped desperately that Hannibal wasn’t suffering too much. Like Murdock, he felt strangely certain that he would know when the older man lost his final fight, and a small, guilty part of him also felt a sense of relief that he wouldn’t have to witness that awful moment in person. He had no idea how he would have coped, and he knew deep down that Hannibal would have taken that into consideration when he chose to leave, wanting to protect both BA and Murdock for as long as he had left.

BA just couldn’t find it in his heart to be angry at Hannibal. Couldn’t be angry at Face either, not really, and he didn’t want to even imagine the sheer agony their brother must be going through watching his ailing lover and being so powerless to help. BA was already angry enough at the universe for stealing their boss away from them all, just when they should have finally been able to live the rest of their lives in peace. 

A soft sniffle and a dampness on BA’s chest gave away how upset Murdock still was, anger giving way to sorrow, though of course this was far from the first time they’d had this conversation. BA pulled him a little closer still, blinking away his own threatening tears. He’d cried enough, and he would cry more in the future, but for now he was just so glad he and Murdock had found each other at last, and moved from friendship to something so much better in the aftermath of Face and Hannibal’s Great Disappearing Act.

Their relationship was new, but at the same time it really wasn’t. They’d known each other for more than a decade, fighting and living side by side, and they’d seen each other at their best and worst. BA had never really thought of the pilot as anything more than an annoying yet brilliant teammate and friend, not to mention one of only four people in the whole world who he trusted with his life, but when a tearful Murdock had kissed him on the lips one night shortly after they’d found the abandoned house, it was as if the blinkers had been abruptly lifted away. 

Murdock was utterly unique, a precious one-of-a-kind gem with eyes that shone and a smile that could dazzle the sun. He was also a genius, brave and bold and kind, with a heart so much bigger than it had any right to be given the hell he’d lived through. Of course, he was also more than a little insane, but then BA had come to realise that there were few people in the world who weren’t. Most just hid it a little better than his crazy baby.

In his own darkest moments he still marvelled that such a special person could possibly find something to love in a big lump of a man like him, with his own sour moods and all his odd quirks, but perhaps the two of them were both just a tiny bit broken in their own ways, and somehow their broken pieces fitted together almost perfectly. 

And BA also secretly wondered if Hannibal had suspected the two of them would turn towards each other in their shared grief over his illness and disappearance. Their cunning, clever commander, always three steps ahead of them all… It was so hard to imagine their lives without him. How would Face ever be able to cope? 

Not feeling brave enough to even think about that tonight, BA slipped a hand gently under Murdock’s chin instead, tilting his partner’s head up until they could share a soft, lingering kiss. Murdock slid his own hand around to BA’s nape to pull him closer, his lips dry yet tasting of the salt from his silent tears, and when the kiss ended they just sat there for a long moment with foreheads touching, close enough to share the same air.

“I love you,” BA told Murdock quietly, starting to gently swing the seat back and forth. “And we’ll get through this together, you and me.”

“Love you too, big guy.” Murdock shifted in BA’s arms to lift his feet from the floor before curling himself into a ball, sliding his head down to rest in BA’s lap with a more contented sigh. There was a pause, then he softly whispered, “It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?”

BA combed his fingers gently through Murdock’s shaggy hair, his gaze drifting skywards just as a shooting star appeared for a brief moment near the distant horizon. “Those stars, man…”

The other half of their team – no, the other half of their family – was out there somewhere, hopefully curled up together and looking up at those same stars. This world wasn’t so very big after all, not compared with the vastness of space. Someday soon, BA knew in his heart that Face would find his way back to them, all alone, and he and Murdock would need to stay strong for that day in order to help their little brother find a way to cope. 

They’d find a way through their grief together, three men where there should always have been four.

Together, they would be strong enough.


End file.
